Quick Cryptic 20 – by Grumpy

Posted on Categories Quick Cryptic
A nice little workout, I’ve been too busy (or too lazy) this week to do the other quickies so I can’t comment on its comparative difficulty, but there’s a good mix of clueing techniques for beginners to absorb, and nothing unknown to be afraid of except the Loch Ness Monster.

Across
1 HONEST – Ho =abbr. for house, cosy home =nest, def. frank.
4 NESSIE – (is seen)* (that * means it’s an anagram) for the monster I have so far failed to glimpse.
9 MAGENTA – M = mark, AGENT = spy, add A, for the reddish dye or toner which seems to be the first to run out in my printer every time.
10 TROOP – ‘in recession’ here means read the clue backwards, so it’s POOR T reversed meaning a company of Boy Scouts, soldiers or acrobats perhaps.
11 RITA – ‘Lovely Rita, meter maid’ the hero of a song on Sgt. Pepper’s LHCB from 1967, written by Paul reputedly after he received a parking ticket in Abbey Road from a warden named Meta Davies (he said ‘she looked like a Rita’. The answer is hidden in B(RITA)IN.
12 ODDMENTS – Peculiar=ODD, people=MEN, T(AKE) S(IDES), meaning scraps.
14 DESTINATION – (ON A TIDE ISN’T)* the anagram is indicated by ‘drifting’ and the answer is where you end up (possibly where you want to be).
18 ALDERMAN – ALDER is a tree, feller is MAN (not a chopper-down) together gives you the supposedly dignified civic representative.
20 STIR – STIR is slang for jail, composed of the first letters (‘originally’) of ‘S(erving) T(ime) I(n) R(eading). Nothing to do with Oscar Wilde.
22 CHILE – A homonym for ‘chilly’ meaning ‘not welcoming’, I suppose.
23 THE MALL – slightly trickier clue although the answer is guessable. HEM is the clothes line, surrounded by TALL for high), T(HE M)ALL.
24 RELISH – A sort of double definition (dd); Enjoy=relish and you might add it to your dinner. Not the best clue in the puzzle.
25 PRETTY – Another dd, meaning both ‘fair’ and ‘fairly’ as in ‘pretty grumpy’.

Down
1 HOMERS – pigeons may be homers, and a poet around 800 BC was called HOMER (from the Greek word for hostage) although nobody really knows his real name.
2 NIGHTIE – NIGH=almost, TIE=secure, suitable garb for one retired to bed.
3 SANE – Put N (indefinite number) inside a stamped addressed envelope (SAE) to get the def. ‘not out to lunch’ which can mean ‘not potty’. “Out to lunch!” was possibly the best album ever issued on the Blue Note label, by Eric Dolphy and chums.
5 ESTIMATE – Put I’M inside an estate car, EST(IM)ATE meaning gauge.
6 SHOWN – ‘the way in which’ = HOW, inside S and N poles, S(HOW)N def. demonstrated.
7 EXPOSE – def. unmask, EX= former, POSE = model, as a verb.
8 GARDEN PARTY – ‘A do without’ is the amusing defintion, an outdoors affair. Politicians=PARTY underneath the early garden. Nothing to do with politician Anthony Eden.
13 STARKERS – K for King is placed amid starers, fascinated spectators, def. naked. Not recommended at ‘a do without’.
16 DANCER – Two bits of solving work needed here, you take DANE for a European, insert C (often used in crosswords for ‘about’ i.e. ‘circa’) add R for river, the answer is obvious but the derivation is less so.
17 ORALLY – O(rator’s) first letter, added to mass meeting=RALLY, and the orator’s words are delivered to the rally thus, orally.
19 DRILL – double def., a drill makes holes and drill is a kind of stout cloth.
21 BEAR – Another double def., two meanings of the word bear, viz. ‘carry’ and ‘put up with’. Not much more to add.

17 comments on “Quick Cryptic 20 – by Grumpy”

  1. About 6 mins for this one. I thought that some of the cluing was a little more complex than some of the other QCs, and THE MALL was my LOI after GARDEN PARTY.
  2. It really is an awkward set up. Trying to alter the grid is a bind. Why not use the system in the Club site?
  3. Thought this was the hardest one yet, with the SW quadrant taking up most of the time. First I read the clue for 16D as “Blah blah waltz blah blah European river” and stuck in DANUBE (unforgivable as I’d just screwed up the main cryptic by similar selective reading). Then I got obsessed with DENIM being the stout cloth. This left such an unpromising set of checkers that I eventually was forced to delete those answers, think about 5-letter countries ending in E, and finally all became clear.
  4. Mr Grumpy’s third appearance and I am not doing very well with his puzzles so far. This one took me 22 minutes but the last 7 of those were spent staring at ?E?S?E at 4ac before the penny dropped. That’s the sort of mental block that gives cause for concern but I shall tell myself that my brain must be addled after coping with the main stinker overnight. But on the other hand that ordeal should have sharpened my brain…
  5. 9m for this, with absolutely ages at the end failing to see PRETTY, for some reason.
    I was slowed down a bit by putting ELDERMAN at 18ac. I’m trying to convince myself that my confusion came from the Old English ‘ealdorman’, which would make this a rather erudite spelling mistake. If it were true.

    Edited at 2014-04-04 11:02 am (UTC)

  6. What a beautifully clear blog, Pip! Were you a schoolmaster in a previous incarnation?

    21 mins LOI was garden party. Z8 kept muttering that it had to be ‘garden’ and was entranced when the penny dropped and he hinted me home. I was somewhat less so – I liked orally and stackers but my COD was homers (despite no Simpson reference!).

    Z8 kept saying that a lot of the clues were of ‘big crossword’ standard – is that a widely held viewpoint?

    1. Sadly nothing so worthy, munki, I meandered from univ. chemistry to marketing to advertising to accounting to mentoring, to retirement, but still haven’t decided what to do when I grow up.
  7. This was too hard for me, DNF. Thanks Pip for the clarity of your blog pointing out the things I missed.
  8. Cracking blog Pip.

    I agree that this was significantly harder than anything to date and more like the main puzzle. I got all but the NW corner.

    I wouldn’t mind one of this difficulty each week.

  9. I suppose it takes all sorts – I thought the whole puzzle fairly straightforward with some previous Quickies far more difficult.
    I would have been faster than the 12 minutes it took if I hadn’t put Haiti in for 22a – well it fits the clue…sort of.
  10. 20 mins give or take. Thanks for the blog Pip. Very clear. “Tree feller”, “enclosure” and “do without” amused me a lot.
  11. Great blog Pip. Highly relieved I did not get this one on my blogging day – my first DNF of the quickies. Good puzzle, no complaints – should have worked it out.

    Wheels came off when I carelessly put in Danube at 16dn – saw the words European, river and waltz in the same sentence (and an A checker already in) and off I went… Which then meant I could not get Chile or Relish (and neither of them were sufficiently obvious to me that they indicated I must be wrong with Danube).

    Ah well, lesson learned.

    Edited at 2014-04-04 11:34 pm (UTC)

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